Brookfield, Connecticut, residents and officials are pushing back on an expansion to the Iroquois Gas Transmission System that supporters say would strengthen winter gas reliability while opponents argue it would worsen local air quality, noise and safety risks near homes and a middle school. The fight has taken on a cross-party shape, with critics including state lawmakers from both parties—among them Stephen Harding, the state Senate minority leader who represents Brookfield—and local officials who have said the opposition is driven by proximity to day-to-day community life rather than partisan identity.
Harding said he lives only a few miles from the compressor station and argued that the project would be developed too close to people who will be in the area. Speaking at a public meeting in January, he described the expansion as a threat to residents’ health and said it should not move forward without broader opportunities for public input. “These are health risks for our kids, for our families, these are environmental risks for everyone in our community,” Harding said, adding that it was being placed “literally yards away from a school, a middle school.” He said the process should give constituents a chance to object, and he added: “This should not be approved in any circumstance.”
Opponents’ concerns include the emissions that would come from operating the new compressors and the everyday impacts they would bring to a community already struggling with air-quality problems. Dunn, Brookfield’s first selectman and a Democrat, said the “opposition to this runs across all party lines — unaffiliated, Democrat, Republican — and there are some good reasons for that.” He cited emissions from the compressors, along with noise and vibrations, and said residents also fear a catastrophic explosion that could endanger students at Whisconier Middle School.
The Iroquois proposal centers on Brookfield’s existing compressor station at the far edge of suburban Fairfield County. Company owners are seeking approval to add two new compressors to boost the ability to push an additional 125 million cubic feet of gas through the pipeline each day “without having to lay new pipes.” The project is described as a $272 million buildout. AP reported that state environmental regulators have issued draft permits while the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont—also a Democrat—gave tentative support, leaving final approval on air-quality permits to the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).
Critics also argue the state’s process has not met their standard for public participation. In January, Brookfield and an environmental group, Save the Sound, filed a lawsuit alleging DEEP failed to provide opponents adequate opportunities to raise concerns before the agency reached a final decision; the case remains pending. Harding criticized Iroquois’ response to local input as well, saying the company had not been transparent and had shut down options that could make the project safer.
State Rep. Martin Foncello, a Republican who represents Brookfield, said that resistance to the compressor facility dates back more than two decades. He said the Connecticut Siting Council approved the construction of the existing two compressors in 2002 over local objections, when residents were focused on security concerns in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Foncello later submitted testimony to DEEP last month urging the agency to deny Iroquois remaining permits, citing safety, air pollution and quality-of-life concerns.
Iroquois has maintained that the project is designed for reliability and compliance. In an emailed statement, the company’s spokeswoman, Ruth Parkins, said the “ExC (Enhancement by Compression) Project” would enhance the reliability and availability of natural gas supplies for Connecticut consumers and power generation because “additional quantities of natural gas will be flowing into and through the state” on “a majority of the days throughout the year.” Parkins also said Connecticut relies on pipelines that pass through neighboring states and argued that if it were not for those interconnections, “everyone would be on oil.”
DEEP has also laid out its view of what the agency must evaluate for this particular permitting action. Will Healey, a spokesman for DEEP, said DEEP is required to consider the project’s impact on air pollution and that the agency determined electric turbines would not be required due to cost and technical challenges. Healey said DEEP required Iroquois to investigate the economic and technical feasibility of electric turbines but determined they would not be required, adding: “This does not preclude Iroquois from volunteering to do so if they chose. However, to date Iroquois has not expressed a desire to use electric turbines.”
The company and regulators have also addressed how the permitting framework treats greenhouse-gas and air-pollution changes. DEEP determined the addition of the two new compressors would not meet the threshold for a major modification because the increase in ozone-forming pollutants would not exceed 25 tons per year, according to AP’s reporting. Critics—including some local opponents and Save the Sound—have questioned that methodology, and residents have also raised concerns about the risk of leaks or explosions, though a researcher at Columbia University said incidents are rare and noted that older pipelines still carry some risk.
As opponents focus on what they describe as the local costs of expanding capacity, a separate debate has emerged over who benefits. Harding and Foncello have said Connecticut needs more natural gas, but that the expansion is not delivering benefits locally because it would increase gas deliveries that end in New York after crossing under Long Island Sound. Harding said, “Connecticut is getting no benefit, we’re not getting any increase in supply from this expansion,” and characterized the expansion as expanding capacity to provide more gas to New York. Iroquois and other experts described the situation as more complicated, saying the pipeline already delivers a portion of gas to Connecticut customers and that the capacity expansion would increase overall pipeline capacity.
Climate-focused groups have supported the opposition as well. Samantha Dynowski, president of the Sierra Club’s Connecticut chapter, said she welcomed Republicans joining the pushback and hoped the experience would lead them to reconsider other natural gas projects beyond their own communities. Dynowski said the negative impacts described by opponents—air pollution, climate impacts and health impacts—should apply across fossil fuel expansions, and that the Brookfield experience should be “eye opening.”
Beyond Brookfield, the Iroquois fight sits in a wider regional context that includes other major pipelines entering Connecticut from New York and local attempts to address winter gas constraints. While Lamont has expressed interest in expanding capacity of pipelines running through New York into Connecticut, that effort has also faced local opposition, including recent New York regulatory actions affecting proposals that would serve New England by linking up with other pipelines. For now, the Brookfield compressor expansion remains pending final DEEP air-permit decisions, even as litigation, public scrutiny and competing claims about reliability, local impacts and public participation continue.